Nina Egli ’99

I’ve been making jewelry for seven years now, and I recently started a clothing line with my mother. She lives in Switzerland, where I was born. She used to be quite a well-known fashion designer in the ’60s and ’70s, and she has an amazing archive of her designs. So I had this idea that we should reproduce them. We go through her archives, pull from her older collections, and renew them for today. That’s my job—the length, the fabric, the updating. But the technical things, the base of the designs, are all my mother. The best part is that I get to be really creative all the time. I also do a lot of illustrations for T-shirts, tote bags. Now, with the clothes, I get to create an entire world. I always have a theme with the collections; I want to tell a story. The collection “Anna Karenina,” for example, was more dark and lacy. I named another one after a Fellini movie. I’m often inspired by movies, music, and art. My inspiration radar is always on.